THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 11, 1995 TAG: 9509090004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
As noted above, many or even most Congress members are hot to turn welfare over to the individual states. Congress would hand each state a lump sum, called a block grant, and instruct the state to help its poor as best it could with that amount.
Currently, states administer welfare programs but must follow a plethora of federal rules and guidelines. With block grants, federal money would arrive with few or no strings attached.
``Our vision for the 21st century,'' said House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich, R-Ohio, ``is taking power and money and control and influence from this city and giving it back to men and women all across this country.''
The move toward welfare block grants is fueled in part by the belief that individual states, having their poor close at hand, best know how to help them. Also, if the states are responsible for welfare, the federal government slips free of the harness of blame as benefits are shrunk to balance the budget.
Before stroking checks for the different states, however, Congress members should carefully look at the track records of many of those governments. Consider, for example, Louisiana, where corruption is a form of entertainment.
Mountains are not as steep as the graph tracking increases in Medicaid payments to private psychiatric facilities there for treating the poor.
Private psychiatric facilities got no Medicaid dollars in 1988, a scant $2.6 million in '89, $14.8 million in '90, $51 million in '91, $105 million in '92, $120 million in '93 and $240 million in '94.
Zero bucks to $240 million in six years is a dizzying climb. Overall, the state's Medicaid spending shot from $1.1 billion in 1989 to $4 billion in 1994, with most of the dollars federal.
Regulators said Louisiana had enough Medicaid psychiatric beds in 1992, but at least 849 have been added, nearly doubling the total, because bucks were waiting to be made. Patient care was often second-rate, but the profit margins were a thing of beauty - 47 percent for one chain, 46 percent for another, 43 percent for still another.
The sordid tale of excess was told in the The Times-Picayune in New Orleans on Aug. 13. The newspaper did a computer analysis of 60 million Medicaid claim records and interviewed more than 200 people.
Times-Picayune staff writer Chris Adams reported:
``Although the growth (in private psychiatric units) started before Edwin Edwards regained the governorship in 1992, it accelerated during his tenure. That was no coincidence. An investigation by The Times-Picayune found that the Edwards administration, through design and indifference, cleared the way for millions of dollars in taxpayer money to flow to a new cadre of psychiatric hospital owners, among them current and former elected officials, Edwards campaign contributors and other political supporters.''
If federal and state rules were not broken, they were bent into pretzels. In the wake of The Times-Picayune expose, federal officials are scurrying to see where fraud might be proved and dollars recovered.
The moral of this tale is that states do not always know and do what's best. It is a moral that Congress members should reflect on in coming weeks as they study ways to cut welfare costs.
Medicaid covers one in every four of this nation's children and one third of all births. Should the future of our children depend on the tender mercies of states like Louisiana? With block grants, the welfare money still would be distributed. Count on that. But to whom? by CNB